There was a phrase among the Boston immigrant Irish in the latter part of the 19th century that went something like this, “I shook the hand that shook the hand that shook the hand … of the Great John L ….” This saying was in reference to the strong sense of identity that the Boston Irish shared with one of the first of their very own to gain international recognition and fame: the heavyweight champion of the world (1882–1892), John L. Sullivan. Undoubtedly the first national sports hero and best-known American of his generation, John L. Sullivan represented the hopes and aspirations of the millions of Americans who identified with him (Isenberg, 1988). His widely heralded success story is credited for acting as a “tipping point” for many youth to forsake a life of crime.

It's important to place the issues expressed by Ryan and Ford (2010) in historical perspective. Although they acknowledge some earlier expressions of concern, especially with respect to professional training (Naylor, 1971), I think it's fair to characterize the overall tenor of their essay as one of sounding the alarm: a new and unique impending identity crisis. However, as previously noted, “industrial-organizational psychology seems to be subject to recurring identity threats” (Lefkowitz, 2005, p. 18).

The commentaries provided an array of perspectives on identity management in our profession. However, there was general agreement on what should be central and distinctive about our field and on the need to cultivate a positive identity for the profession. The commentators also suggested a number of ways to cultivate this identity. For us, the commentaries also stimulated further reflection on our approach to training graduate students. We share our reflections and encourage readers to take the time to reflect on their own efforts to contribute to the profession's management of identity.

There doesn't seem to be much disagreement that experience should be at the heart of leadership development. The energy in the commentaries was around building on the existing foundation of knowledge about experience-based leadership development, bolstering certain areas to make it more complete and usable. I examine more closely several of the issues raised in the commentaries: the role of training and education in leadership development, increasing the probability that the desired learning from experience actually happens, and the transfer of learning.

The central premise of this article is that organizations have social and economic interests in building policies and practices that support lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgendered (LGBT) workers. This argument is based on empirical evidence that (a) LGBT workers continue to face discrimination at work from which they are not protected under federal law, and (b) discrimination has negative consequences for individual's mental and physical health, and on reasoning that (c) organizations share responsibility for the social good of the communities in which they operate. We offer practical suggestions for creating LGBT-supportive organizations and propose that industrial–organizational psychologists have an ethical obligation to support such efforts.

The commentaries on my target article expand on it in many useful and enlightening ways, and some provide a glimpse at important new research. The commentaries also point to a few issues raised in the original article that require clarification or elaboration. In this response, I begin by recalling the “big idea” that initially led to interest in emotional intelligence (EI) as a concept, which is that success in life and work depends on more than just the basic cognitive abilities measured by IQ tests. I then clarify what I mean by emotional and social competence (ESC): It is not a single, unitary psychological construct but rather a very broad label for a large set of constructs. After considering whether we really need the ESC concept, I discuss whether the single, comprehensive definition of EI that I proposed in the target article is the best one in light of alternatives suggested in some of the commentaries. Next, I return to the issue of measurement and note new ideas and suggestions that emerge in the commentaries. I conclude by considering the question of how much EI or ESC adds conceptually or predictively to IQ or personality.

Although synthetic validation has long been suggested as a practical and defensible approach to establishing validity evidence, synthetic validation techniques are infrequently used and not well understood by the practitioners and researchers they could most benefit. Therefore, we describe the assumptions, origins, and methods for establishing validity evidence of the two primary types of synthetic validation techniques: (a) job component validity and (b) job requirements matrix. We then present the case for synthetic validation as the best approach for many situations and address the potential limitations of synthetic validation. We conclude by proposing the development of a comprehensive database to build prediction equations for use in synthetic validation of jobs across the U.S. economy and reviewing potential obstacles to the creation of such a database. We maintain that synthetic validation is a practically useful methodology that has great potential to advance the science and practice of industrial and organizational psychology.

In recent decades, the Cleary (1968) approach for testing for differences in regression lines among demographic groups has been codified as a central approach to evaluate a test for bias. However, this approach is fraught with numerous shortcomings, a preponderance of implicit assumptions, and outcomes that are not sufficient to conclude that there is a problem with a test. We believe these shortcomings are poorly understood by many industrial–organizational (I–O) psychologists, that this method for evaluating test bias is overrelied on by our profession, and that it is interpreted improperly by those wishing to evaluate tests for bias in applied settings. Moreover, eliminating differential prediction may be impossible in some cases, undesirable in others, and places an undue burden on organizational researchers.

Conclusions about the effectiveness of selection systems require gathering, evaluating, weighting, and interpreting validity data, but these conclusions are obviously challenged to the extent that this process is suspect. Local validity information within the organization may be desirable but not available, and conducting a local validity study may be practically infeasible because of limited time, resources, and small sample sizes. Specific validity studies outside the organization may also be problematic if they are based on jobs or settings of questionable relevance, small sample sizes, range-restricted incumbent samples, and unreliable or content-deficient predictor and criterion measures. It is usually an understatement to say that sifting through a pile of such studies to make educated guesses about the validity of selection measures within of a specific organizational setting could be an idiosyncratic, time-consuming, and frustrating process, resulting in little confidence in any summary conclusions.